Visual capture and human error

✍ Scribed by Gerald E. Larson; Zannette A. Perry

• Book ID: 101279311
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 113 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0888-4080
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199906)13:3<227::aid-acp563>3.0.co;2-j

✦ Synopsis

We investigated relationships between everyday error rates, susceptibility to stimulus-driven (i.e. external) capture of visual attention and working memory. Using an eye-tracking task called the antisaccade paradigm, we found that relatively error-prone subjects made signi®cantly more unintended, stimulus-driven eye movements. This ®nding suggests a link between error-proneness and a tendency towards environmental (versus volitional) control of behaviour. No evidence was found for a connection between working memory capacity and error proneness or eye movements, though range restriction may have aected the working memory results. The ®ndings are compatible with the view that some mishaps stem from environmental capture and triggering of inappropriate actions, and that individuals vary in their susceptibility to capture. Some implications are that: (1) mishaps might be reduced by redesigning tasks to reduce capture errors, e.g. by restructuring critical tasks to eliminate action sequences with common initial stages; (2) the antisaccade task may be a useful dependent measure in research on how stressors (e.g. fatigue, noise, temperature) increase the likelihood of mishaps. Speci®cally, since antisaccade performance was correlated with reports of real-world mistakes in the current study, antisaccade scores may allow useful predictions about how accident probability varies as a function of dierent conditions.